Christian Living, Culture, Politics, Spiritual Growth
John Beeson
Vulgar Authenticity

Who is your favorite celebrity? Your favorite political pundit? Your favorite politician?

Why are you drawn to these individuals? Maybe it is their personality. Perhaps it is because you respect their convictions. Possibly, it is because of their unique style.

Taylor Swift might be the most beloved celebrity in the world. Many have commented that one of the reasons that Swift has cultivated such a devoted following is her accessibility and down-to-earth qualities, from what she wears to the love stories she writes about in her music.

Vulgar Authenticity
Christian Living, Biblical Studies, Religion, Spiritual Growth, Theology
John Beeson
The Faith of Unbelief

Bart Ehrman has perhaps done more to undermine the credibility of the Bible than anyone else in my lifetime. But his story didn’t begin that way. Ehrman is a New Testament scholar and skeptic. Ehrman grew up in a Christian home, attended a conservative Bible school, and then found his way to a liberal seminary where his faith in the God of the Bible unraveled. That seminary happens to be the seminary I would attend a couple of decades later.

For Ehrman, everywhere he looks he sees holes in the biblical story. The inconsistencies that he sees have led him to determine that he cannot trust in the God of the Bible.

The Faith of Unbelief
Christian Living, Culture, Spiritual Growth
John Beeson
Don't Numb Your Feelings

“Don’t listen to your feelings; remember what Jesus did for you!”

“Don’t be guided by your feelings; listen to what God commands you to do!”

In just the past week, I heard both of these warnings. Two very different Christian speakers urged their audiences to shut down their feelings. These admonitions resonate. They contain truth. It is correct that our feelings don’t override truth, nor do our emotions negate what God has done. Neither do our feelings give us an out for what God commands us to do.

Don't Numb Your Feelings
History, Spiritual Growth, Suffering, Wisdom
John Beeson
Lord, Reach Your Justice Down

I had outsized emotions as a child. Games, especially, would get the best of me, whether cards or boardgames or sports. In response to a stroke of bad luck, a hot surge of anger would erupt, followed quickly by tears and then embarrassment.

Emotions are God’s gift to us in many ways. They are one of his kind ways of showing us where our deep attachments lie.

Our son started his freshman year at the University of Arizona this fall. It’s been a great experience for him, but not without its adjustments. The climate of a secular school is quite different than the Christian school he graduated from

Lord, Reach Your Justice Down
Culture, Generosity, Nature, Relationships
John Beeson
Marshmallows and Friends

Most have heard of the famous Stanford marshmallow experiment. In 1970, psychologist Walter Mischel invited kids into his lab. A child was offered a marshmallow that they could eat, or, if they waited until the researcher returned, they were given a second marshmallow. About one-third of the kids waited approximately fifteen minutes for the additional reward.

The study then tracked those children over time and found that children who waited for the second reward tended to have higher SAT scores and lower body mass indexes. Later tests have challenged those outcomes, but it hasn’t stopped parents everywhere from running the experiment on their kids, often with humorous results.

Marshmallows and Friends

Leadership

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A Purposeful Spiritual Life, part 5

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A Purposeful Spiritual Life, part 5

Mike Tyson, one of the greatest boxers in history earned over $400M in his career, but managed to file for bankruptcy in 2003 with debts of $27M. He is not alone. Mega-stars Scottie Pippen, Johnny Unitas, Lenny Dykstra, Lawrence Taylor, and Tony Gwynn all filed bankruptcy after careers that netted them hundreds of millions of dollars.[i] How is that possible?

Ex-athletes and soldiers struggle with life after the playing field and battle field for the same reason: their careers afford them a sense of individual and collective purpose that is difficult to replace.

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A Purposeful Spiritual Life, part 3

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A Purposeful Spiritual Life, part 3

For my birthday my wife took me out on a hike. We enjoyed the beautiful Arizona morning, winding our way up into the foothills of the Catalina Mountains through the lush Sonoran desert landscape. We went on a well-traveled trail toward our destination: pools tucked into the Catalina foothills, 2.8 miles from the trailhead.

As inexperienced hikers who hadn’t hiked the trail in some 20 years, we overestimated our progress and asked multiple passersby how far away the pools were. It shouldn’t take this long to go 2.8 miles, right? Our legs grew heavy and my wife wondered if we had made a wrong turn. Maybe we should just turn around?

Finally we crested over a hill and below us lay the pools below. Our pace quickened with the pools in view and the final 15 minutes sped by. We relaxed on sun-bathed boulders, ate a snack, took some pictures, and then headed back. Knowing the terrain now and having a much better sense of how far the 2.8 mile destination was, there were no moments of confusion or frustration. The trail seemed to melt quickly behind us and we arrived back at the trail head quickly.

Knowing your destination changes your hike.

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Creativity Inc. by Ed Catmull

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Creativity Inc. by Ed Catmull

Ed Catmull is one of the geniuses behind Pixar, the incredible animation company that revolutionized what we expect from animated films. The first 80+ pages of Creativity, Inc. are about Catmull's own story and the founding of Pixar. The rest of the book tilts more toward what the title promises: leadership strategies to unleash creativity. I enjoyed Catmull's story, but if you want to jump to the leadership strategies, you can leapfrog the first part.

Catmull's strategies won't strike anyone as particularly innovative. You'll likely have heard or intuited a lot of what he says, but what I found particularly inspiring was the tenacity and single-minded focus Catmull and the other leaders at Pixar had in implementing simple but profound ideas. And perhaps most impressive is Catmull himself, clearly a leader who embodies the ideals he puts forth.

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A Purposeful Spiritual Life, part 2

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A Purposeful Spiritual Life, part 2

Where am I going and how am I going to get there?

Leadership books abound which ask these questions and coaching leaders to zero in on a purpose and then strategize their daily schedules to achieve this purpose.

Such intentionality in the context of the business world makes our own lack of purposefulness in our spiritual lives all the more obvious. But such a purposelessness stands in direct opposition to the purposefulness that God invites us into.

Jesus himself lived an incredibly purposeful life. If you pick up the gospel of John, you see that Jesus is very sensitive to discerning and following God’s purpose for his life. A purpose which leads ultimately not to self-fulfillment but to self-giving at the cross. In John 17:1, Jesus prays, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you.”

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A Purposeful Spiritual Life, part I

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A Purposeful Spiritual Life, part I

What plan do you have for your spiritual life? That’s a real question. Pause and answer it. Where do you want to go spiritually? And how are you going to get there?

My hunch is that most of us don’t have a plan for our spiritual life. Most of us live as if we hope that we’ll drift into a better spiritual life. But that is a faulty assumption. Have you drifted into losing weight? Or becoming a better father? Or into your CPA?

For some reason we think that even though we make plans for improvement and we set goals in other areas, it's not necessary or spiritual for us to set out these kinds of plans for our spiritual walk.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1.      Watch the World’s First Roller Coaster: The fun history of the roller coaster.

2.      The Common Yet Neglected Problem of Burnout: Some excellent infographics on burnout. 80% of Americans say they have experienced burnout. 26% of men and 31% of women experienced burnout for longer than one year.

3.      Why God Will Disappoint You, and Why That’s Good: Zach Barnhart reflects on the powerful thought that "God loves us enough to disappoint us." 

4.      8 Ways God Works Suffering For Our Good: Tim Challies on how God beautifully and purposefully uses suffering in our lives.

5.      Where Atari and Chuck E Cheese Came From: The same man founded Atari and Chuck E Cheese. This is his fascinating story. 

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1.      The Rescue Begins: The story of Easter begins long before Jesus arrives on the scene. I love The Gospel Project’s videos.

2.      Learning Styles are Bunk: Joy Pullman on the research that has debunked "learning styles" and why continuing to use this framework is counterproductive.

3.      Is My Desire Sour? Melissa Kruger gives us helpful questions to help analyze whether our desires are godly or not. The last question, "What is my desire while I wait?" might be the most important.

4.      Rules Without Reasons: Mike Leake: "If I’m being honest, there are some things in the Scriptures that I simply do not get. Some positions which I believe are biblical still make me a bit uneasy. At times, I simply do not understand why God set these things up the way that He did. But I’m asked to obey them nonetheless."

5.      The Science of Creating High-Performing Companies: Paul Zak is a neuroeconomist. Yup. I guess that's a thing. This is an interesting podcast where he talks about the impact of trust on an organization. 

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Why You Shouldn't Go on a Mission Trip

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Why You Shouldn't Go on a Mission Trip

In 1998 I went on a short-term mission trip to Honduras following the devastating impact of Hurricane Mitch. I still recall the stunning site of inches of mud caked over the entire cityscape of Tegucigalpa. Unbeknownst to me, sociologist Kurt Ver Beek was watching. He conducted a study surveying 162 short-term mission participants who, like me, traveled to Honduras in 1998. He later published a devastating report on these relief efforts.[i] Among his findings were that short-term groups spent $30,000 per home to build homes equivalent to homes built by local organizations for $2,000 apiece. There was no discernable difference between the homes or in the impact of them being built by short-term gruops. And perhaps, more disheartening, one year later there was no significant change in the generosity of those who had gone on the trips. Ouch!

Next week I’m going to tell you why you ought to participate on a short-term mission trip (full disclosure: I just returned from a short-term trip to Senegal). But today I’m going to explore why you shouldn’t go on a short-term trip.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1.      The Fight Between a Volcano and Life: Footage of new growth struggling to survive in an otherworldly landscape at the foot of Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano.  Thanks to Tim Challies for pointing to this cool video.

2.      How to Raise Empathetic Kids. Rebecca Randall with a thoughtful reflection on the impact of parents on their kids: “The students’ values seemed to echo what they thought their parents and teachers valued more: When asked, 48 percent chose achievement as their top value, 30 percent chose happiness, and only 22 percent chose caring as a top priority.”

3.      The Hardest Walk: Taylor Brenner reflects on what makes foster care so difficult and so rewarding.

4.      You Don’t Have a Communication Problem: Tony Morgan reflects on the difficult truth that as leaders we probably don’t have a communication problem, we probably have a vision, complexity, or systems problem.

5.      Professor Joe v. the IRS and Turbo Tax: The UShas the most complicated tax system in the world? Why can’t we make it simpler? How one man took on the system and why he failed.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1.      5 Secrets of Superior Decision-Makers: Craig Groeschel was an acquired taste for me, but it’s stuff like this that has won me over. He packs an incredible amount of helpful content into these 26 minutes. You can watch via this link, or you can also listen via podcast.

2.      To Be a Diaper Changer: Nick Batzig reflects on the daily grittiness of being a real world changer.

3.      How to Love God and Your Neighbor through Your Work: We work well because we first love God and we then love our neighbor. James M Hamilton Jr. offers this reflection.

4.      Time Audit: Where do you really spend your time? JD Grear with this helpful resource on how to analyze where we are spending our time. 

5.      State of Inquiry: On this TED Radio Hour a number of speakers explore what it looks like to ask good questions. I particularly appreciated Eric Haseltine’s final session where he compares knowledge to an anchor that can hold us in the harbor. He quotes Isaac Asimov: “The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discovers, is not, ‘Eureka! I’ve found it,’ but ‘That’s funny!’”

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